DEAN BURKE’S SERMON

New Zealand Tablet, 17 February 1921, Page 19

DEAN BURKE’S SERMON

( . “All power is given to Me in heaven and on earth. Going therefore teach you all nations,, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and behold I am with you all days even unto the consummation of the world.” (Matt. 28, 18.) ■ S';These words contain the grand commission given by their Master to the Apostles to carry on the work He had come on earth to do— instruction of mankind in heavenly truth and the salvation of the race. You notice in this commission striking features. The commission was wide as the world, universal as mankind. It gave the Apostles full powers to teach, to baptise, to minister and rule, to do all things necessary for the establishment and extension of the Church and further these powers were to be continued in an apostolic succession to the end of time: “Behold lam with you all days to the consummation of the world.” There is the promise of permanence and success. Further, you shall remember that the men to whom this wide commission was given were men without human qualifications for the task, without human learning, eloquence, influence, wealth. And the task implied the planting of new ideas in a soil where an opposite system of thought, religion and prejudice had been long established and cherished. Philosophy, literature, legislation, the priesthood and oracles of paganism were to be overcome and silenced by men apparently without fitness for the work. Yet wonderful was their success. Not more than 25 years had passed when St. Paul could boldly assert;—“But I say; have the nations not heard? Yes, verily, their sound went over all the earth and their words [the Apostles’] unto the end of the world.” Fifty years after the death of the last Apostles, St. Justin and St. Irenaeus attest the great expansion of the new religion. “There is no race of men,” said Justin, “whether Greeks or barbarians, amongst whom prayers and the Eucharist are not offered up to the Father and Maker of all things in the name of Jesus crucified.” Though they were fearfully persecuted the new people grew the more rapidly in numbers. “The blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians,” said one of them. “The more we are mowed down the more we increase!” “We are but of yesterday and we have overspread your empire,” said Tertullian to the Roman authorities. “Your cities,. your towns, your assemblies, your armies, tribes, palaces, senate, and forum swarm with Christians. We leave you only your temples.” A thousand years had the Roman legions with slow, painful, blood-stained steps been extending the great empire. In, 300 years the Apostles and their successors had, despite every obstacle, absorbed its cities and provinces, one by one, and had gone beyond its boundaries. The Almighty willed it and human opposition melted away—“ Going teach ye all nations . . . . and behold I am with you all days.” The missionaries of Christianity filled with the spirit of their commission, not content with triumph over Greek and Roman paganism, panted for new conquests, among new nations and races. They could not rest, they would never rest as long as a single nation sits in darkness and in the shadow of death. So in the fourth century historians find them going south into Africa, where St: Frumontius, consecrated Bishop of Ethiopia by St. Athanasius, brought the Ethiopians within the fold; and in the fifth century going as far north as Ireland, where St. Patrick converted the Irish people. The succeeding centuries present the same sight—nation following nation: Angles and Saxons, Bohemians and Germans, Hungarians and Poles, Danes, Swedes, and Russians —not a corner of Northern Europe was left unevangelised. Not satisfied with the conquest. of Europe, the missionary tide flowed into unknown Asia and Africa — preacher of the Gospel following in the track of the secular explorer and often going before him;—“And you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and even to the uttermost parts of the earth.” ~ So the work of conversion went on; so the victories over paganism were multiplied; so the prophecies and promises of Our Lord Jesus Christ were fulfilled. - But He warned the Apostles of ;the trials and difficulties. awaiting them. “Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. They will deliver you up in councils. They will scourge you in their synagogues. You' shall be brought before governors and kings ' for My sake; . .' The disciple is not above the : master nor the servant above his lord. . 1 ; . Fear ye not them that kill the body and are not able to kill the soul.’,’ -Like a ship on a boisterous sea the Christian Church has been, repeatedly assailed Hy, fierce t storms. The winds of secular governmental rage have howled round

her; waves of rebellion, heresy, and schism have often threatened to swallow her up; rage and fury have directed shot and shell against her. Her stoutest captains ' and boldest sailors have feared and trembled, unable to see any light in the gloom. But always at last, “Jesus saith to them:Why are ye fearful, 0 ye of little faith? Then rising up He commanded the winds and the-sea and there came a great calm.” , Passing over the persecution of the first ages ' and those ravages of heresy like Arianism and Protestantism which tore away great nations from the,., fold we glance briefly at the last great trial of the Church because its force is not yet spent and it is a sample, and summary of those calamities -that preceded it. The leaders of the Reformation declared that they had given men religious liberty and freed them from the dogmatic tyranny of the Catholic Church; the French philosophers and revolutionaries would give men tho wildest licence; they would free them from the authority of the State as well. They would free them from all restraint. “Neither God nor master”, of any kind was their governing law of conduct. The results of this teaching came quicklylike a fearful, alldestroying hurricane. The revolution arose in blood and rioted in blood. Multitudes of the good, the virtuous, and the noble were despatched beneath the sharp edge of the guillotine. The clergy and religious were hunted from post to pillar, drowned, hanged, driven from the country. Churches were destroyed or desecrated, cathedrals, like Notre Dame in Paris, were, in contempt for religion, made the scenes of drunkenness and debauchery! The Church in Franco was crushed. The infidel leaders dreamed they could crush it everywhere. They sent an army into Italy. It reached Rome; took away the aged Pope, Pius VI., and brought him prisoner to France! Then the shout went up from Paris, London, and Berlin that the Catholic Church was no more; the line of her Pontiffs was broken, her glory gone. And this cry went up not merely from the hoarse ‘throats of mobs; it was repeated by learned historians and philosophers. “Catholicism is almost played out,” said Novalis. “The old Papacy is laid in the tomb and Rome for the second time has become a ruin.” “The Church of Rome is now only an old ruin into which fresh vigor can never be infused,” said Johann von Herder. As the dying Pope looked out from the window of his French prison in August, 1797, the sight which met his gaze as not encouraging—the French Church in ruins; tho German Catholics, lay and cleric, cold and indifferent; Spain, Portugal, and Latin America under the heel of Freemasonry; Josephism demoralising Austria; Ireland and Poland — most faithful of the nations — in the strangle-grip of an anti-Catholic Imperialism; the foreign missions starved for want of European support; the United States of America and Australia as yet, you may say, almost unknown. A few sailors and explorers might have heard of New Zealand. Yet no word of complaint or discouragement fell from the lips of the ill-used Pope. He knew with the certainty of faith the meaning of the words of promise attached to the great commission;—“And behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.” The death-time of the Catholic Church, the 19th century, became the age of her greatest expansion. Previous centuries, regarded as very fruitful in missions, had added some ten million, some twenty million people to the Church; the 19th century showed an increase of 100 million! Tho preacher hero sketched briefly the revival of the Faith in the old European nations, the success of Foreign missions and the appearance of the great national Church of the U.S.A., and of the Churches of Australia and New Zealand —all within the 19th century which had begun in persecution, sorrow, and gloom. On this flowing tide of religious progress the diocese of Dunedin came into being just 50 years ago. Up to that time the country, all around here, was ecclesiastically an annex of Wellington. A few French missionaries Marist Fathers, Moreau, Martin and Belliard, travelled in hard conditions up and down ministering to the small groups of scattered Catholics who somehow found entrance to those hallowed —hallowed by : consecration to the memory of John Knox. Otago and Southland,- were in those days, so intensely Protestant that a ban of exclusion was set up abainst’ “Papists and Pagans;” that is I suppose against 'lrishmen and Chinamen. See the esteem in which your fathers were held by those worthy old settlers! But the gold rush of 1861 came, and Catholics, by the hundred, poured in from Victoria. In a few years there were four or five thousand scattered over the gold fields. With the impulse of life and '.energy that drove those sturdy old miners, onward, instructed by the missionaries, they petitioned the Pope for a Bishop of Southern New Zealand and for some more priests. The petition was granted and Otago and Southland were erected into the new diocese of Dunedin. The next step was the choice

of a Bishop. At -that time,. December 1869, the Bishops of the world were in Rome for the opening of the Vatican Council. The eye of Pius IX fell upon the Vicar-Apostolic of Grahamstown, Dr. Moran, then in his full vigor, wiry and active. He was selected. The appointment came to him, he told me, as a shell-shock. He knew no more of New- Zealand and its conditions than he did of Korea. He .was, happy in South Africa his work there was progressing to his satisfaction and he had settled down for life. But when the command to march came he was not one to urge excuses ; he knelt down, asked the Pope’s blessing, and said, “Holy Father, X go willingly.” Bishop Moran turned to Ireland for help. Ten nuns of the Dominican Convent of Sion Hill, Dublin, volunteered for the new mission. At the head of the band was S. M. Gabriel, then young and active, and Mother Agnes, already 60. When reminded that she was too old for such a journey, she said, “Not at all; I shall be of some use, my dears; I shall teach the Catechism to the infants.” And she taught the Catechism for 31 years in yonder school-rooms. The Bishop found only one priest ready to follow him on his distant mission. That was Father Coleman —a man of destiny in the circumstances, a band of missionaries in himself, a man of initiative and unflinching courage, a man who supplied for what was wanting in the more tender, sensitive nature of the Bishop. Twenty years later, I preached his funeral sermon. I selected for my text the words of St. Paul to Timothy, “Carefully study to present thyself before God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed.” I was told that had I searched the Bible from cover to cover I could not have found words more suited to strike off the character of the man. As, I left this pulpit the Bishop from that throne said, “Father, I thank you so much for those words spoken of my best and most steadfast friend.” Father Coleman and Mother Gabriel were pillars of support to the Bishop amid the difficulties of the first years of this Diocese. Mother Gabriel was a woman of vivid faith, of large ideals, of generosity, of forgiving temper, and of a self-forgetting unselfishness beyond any I have known. Well, the missionaries armed at Port Chalmers in the middle of February, 1871. The small Catholic population of the town wont down and conducted them to the city with all the demonstrations of respect and joy they could make. In a few days the Bishop and Father Coleman looked round and they found that the prospects of building up a diocese and the institutions of a diocese were discouraging indeed. After a little the Bishop issued a pastoral pointing out the needs of the place in the way of schools, churches, and priests, if religion was to be planted firmly in this remote corner of Christendom. He concluded; —“The above enumeration is, I feel, alarming. It shadows forth long-sustained and generous effort. It portends sacrifices of no small magnitude. But I feel assured that those Catholics, both in this town and through the country parts, who have for the past few years distinguished themselves by charities sent to Europe and Australia, will, on this great occasion, not forget what they owe to themselves, to they* children, and to those who have come hither at their own expense from distant Ireland for no other purpose than to labor amongst them.” The appeal was heard and answered' generously by the congregation in Dunedin. Father Coleman set out on a journey of a visitation through the country districts. He went round by Palmerston, on to Naseby, "to Queenstown, Cromwell, Clyde, Roxburgh, Lawrence, and Waipori—doing missionary work every day, saying Mass in miners’ huts, preaching, baptising, f' and marrying in little public halls and collecting for the /Bishop’s needs in Dunedin. Skirting the North Taieri hills he came; down by Roslyn, dragging after him his tired; drooping horse. He had been, out 15 weeks. In a garb faded, worn, dust-stained embrowned and sunburnt, a scarecrow-skeleton, he knocked at the little wooden* cottage on Belltower Hill, where the Bishop lived. H; had the description from his own lips. At first the Bishop, who was short-sighted, did not recognise him. hen there followed words of welcome and many inquiries as to the excursion: The Bishop asked anxiously about the people in the country but they were ■ the grand old miners from’: Tipperary, Limerick, and other Irish counties, and Father Coleman was able to answer: “Good Bishop,- they are far but they are good”; and he passed into the Bishop's hands a wallet containing £4OOO, the purchase money.-/ for the Bishop’s residence “and for things pressingly . needed. : f No longer was there place for discouragement. Things prospered. Even new priests turned up of their own accord .p Father ?Mackay; * who is with us to-day,' and Father Larkin came—the former - taking charge of Queenstown and Cromwell districts, the other making Lawrence his centre The miners l still poured in from Victoria, and their children were growing up; hence the need for more priests to administer; the Sacraments and for more nuns to teach In 1875, Father Coleman went to Ireland , for help and

Fathers Crowley, O’Leary, Walshe, and Gleasure, and a number of nuns answered his appeal. Soon Father Newport ana Father Purton came. Still the cry was for more priests and more teachers, and Fathers Fitzgerald, McGrath, James O’Neill, P. Lynch, and myself arrived in 1881 to take up the Mass-swag and go over tracks rough and forbidding, some of them, but still made possible by those who had gone before. Soon Fathers Vereker, O’Donnell, and Hunt were added to our staff. Vocations from among their own pupils and from pupils of convents up north were yearly increasing the Dominican community. Yet there was a demand for more teachers, and Sion Hill sent out, about this time, another batch. Our journeys in the eighties to places far off the high roads are not pleasant to look back upon. Some of them were short repetitions of Father Coleman’s first anabasis to the Dunstan and of Father Mackay’s winter rides up the Skippers track. But no one then considered them heroic; they were general and in the day’s work. You received no thanks or sympathy for inconveniences or bruises endured least of all from the Bishop. He praised you for permanent results achieved, but not a word for personal pain met with. No namby-pamby softness for him. “"ion see, good Bishop,” said I once to him, “these fingers with which I held the reins are stiff and disfigured after nine months—frost-bitten of a. winter’s night as I went astray in the snow on Macraes’ hills!” Consolation received: “Oh, that’s nothing; my fingers were stiff for 18 . months after exposure on the Majuba Hills in South Africa. It can bo severely cold in South Africa on winter nights!” n. "Well, 15 years passed awayonly 15 yearsand the Bishop replying to an address presented to him by the people of Mosgiel on the laying of the foundation stone of their now church in 1886, said: “The kindness of my people to me is great indeed, and as it would seem, irrepressible. It is impossible for me to give a suitable answer to your address, and I must ask you now to take the will for the deed and to permit me merely to say that l am deeply grateful for your kindness, for your patience with me, and for your extraordinary generosity. But you remind mo that it is only 15 years since we met on finis spot to open your old church, the first church I opened in the diocese. Your mention of the occasion carries the memory back over the oast 15 years, and this therefore seems a fit place and a fit occasion to make a retrospect of this history. Then he told the people how in that time 25 churches had been built, the beautiful Cathedral of Dunedin opened, 17 schools established, four convents founded, several residences for the clergy erected and priests and teachers increased tenfold— done without help from extraneous sources, all done through their faith and generosity. This was a psalm of triumph for the old man and it gladdened the hearts of the people. “Goiim they went and wept, sowing the seed, returning they came, ' ith joyfulness, bearing their sheaves”! Speaking six years afterwards, Cardinal Moran said • -Since then (1886) the work of the erection of convents schools, and churches lias not relaxed in this- diocese. On the contrary it has gone on increasing and progressing and at present, after 21 years’ labors, the wortK t beautiful'^ 10 whilst elPPed Vith f clmro,lcs > some of them tbe,« ++ ]'L 24 T.ests aiul 80 mins with some Brothels attend-to the spiritual needs of the faithful and the education of the children. In the matter rf odtaSon tile lecoid of progress is most singular In 1871 +| lpr teln 11 sd,ools ( ; u r there are-26 school’s with over to Lt“ rn n I Chit ( m, I" 08 ' 11 "■».»« p**** be dirtied growth *? » id “ d “«<> not m Cr £ ° f tlle quarter-century I „ e ed non go. it is well known to a I .Wp Tv, InT present, have been Z TZi y°n have repeated the deeds'oT’t! cZst 1 7 tlle past; MoM !M ' rs, "v .-A ffirs this place and the solemnitTof ° f we are assembled holding 'this ™ H to - dav the past -some reason to" be iubilant Here looking into the past we arc <rlnU i • 1 Jleie looking into wo see foundations" sol id i via i T and look - pres ? A* ? 1 round us we have in them a v f d lo °kmg into the future difficulties, but the old nm ? !°? o ‘, ie past had many conditions. Their faith P w-q e + " ere fought up in simpler denying the strength f l\ s trong, their lives were selfand persecuted was upon tbom of another . land tried difficulties; the faithful nf e ™-■ Thofuture-will have its placed in different I rend it Jr * ? C ,° I ming centur y will be difference, iS n -midst.of doubt, infc? r

brighter than that which met the gaze of Pius VI. ‘ one hundred years ago. May ,not the great Founder of the Church who said, “Behold I am with you all days,” renew in the twentieth greater wonders than those of the nineteenth century? To-day we can take up the old psalm: “Tu cs Dens qui facts 'nnraoiha solus • notam fccisti in yentih'nk virtutem fuam. Liberasti in hrachio fun populum tunm—filios Israel et Joseph.” Thou art God Who dost wonders, Thyself alone; Thou hast manifested Thy power amongst the nations; Thou hast delivered in the strength of Thine arm — children of Israel and Joseph. Jubilate Deo omms terra: nitrate in conspectu ejns in exultation e.” Let all the earth rejoice before God; enter ye in before His sight with exultation. To-day we assemble here before His Face and chant in our Te Drum, In te demine spernvi, non confviator in acternvm.” Today with a peculiarly emphasised fervor the clergy can sing aloud the doxology, immemorial on our fathers’ lips, (Jot in Vatri et film et spirit saneto; and the people viewing our Church’s past, its present, and its future can respond: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be —world without end.